D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7

[lesser_minion]

Sorry, I misread you.

[Stubbazubba]

I never said it was. What I said was thrown out for being terrible was Orcus. Version 1 of 4e - in which every class had a different recharge mechanic, there were no long term recharge mechanics, and there were at least half a dozen separate condition tracks to the point even the designers weren't sure which to use.

Except those would actually solve the problems D&D has been trying to address for a decade while simultaneously avoiding all the issues that 4e had in its answers for them. Sure, it would have its own issues, but I would love to see Orcus finished.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Except those would actually solve the problems D&D has been trying to address for a decade while simultaneously avoiding all the issues that 4e had in its answers for them. Sure, it would have its own issues, but I would love to see Orcus finished.

The dying earth RPG?

[Stubbazubba]

While I think Pairodice is generally correct, I think neonchameleon has a point that the Skill Challenge system did give extended skill checks structure and pacing for dealing with such things. While a good DM learns these things, a newbie or an ignorant DM will profit from the structure. Everything else about SCs, though, is pretty bad, maybe even misleading and detrimental.

@Craft: I don't get the reference.

[Craft (Cheese)]

@Craft: I don't get the reference.

In the Dying Earth RPG, skill ranks are represented as a pool of dice. To make a check, you roll 1d6: If the result is greater than or equal to 4, it succeeds, otherwise, it fails (situational modifiers can change the probability of success or failure). If you fail, you can spend a die from the relevant skill pool to reroll: You can do this as many times as you like until you succeed. However, pool dice don't come back on their own, you have to take action to "refresh" them. Each skill has different requirements for what you have to do to refresh it; For example, refreshing Magic* requires you to spend a few hours in a library reading books on magic, while refreshing Persuade requires you to pick a fight with someone and win. Other refresh requirements include having a few good drinks, a night on the town, or spend some time gambling.

*The "important" skills, like Magic, Combat, and Persuade, each have a "style". Your style gives you different bonuses in different situations as well as determining how you refresh your ability pool. The examples given for Magic and Persuade are for the Studious and Intimidating styles, respectively. If you have the Eloquent persuade style instead, for example, you refresh by spending some time listening to the words of a skilled orator or reading poetry.

The intent of the refresh mechanic, as stated by the book, is to be a roleplaying guide: Characters in the dying earth novels are selfish, lazy, indulgent hedonists. A no-nonsense character who puts their mission ahead of everything else, and never takes out any time to just goof off, doesn't fit the spirit of the setting.

I haven't played it myself, so I don't know if it actually accomplishes this goal or not. Sounds interesting, though.

[obryn]

Everything is still dependent on your ruling, though, which takes up more time and effort even if you're completely transparent. If a 3e party decides to do something simple like dunk an enemy into a vat of acid or something complicated like march for a full day up to a mountain pass full of constant blizzards, walk through that, and set up an ambush involving boulders and crevasses, everything's laid out for them and they can compare those to their stats and estimated enemy stats to determine chances of success and such.

I just want to zero in on this before talking about the new Mearls article.

More or less, I completely disagree about which is more time and effort. I don't want a book full of tables of stuff. To me, that's a whole lot of time spent either looking things up or trying to figure out a closest match, when really what it comes down to is someone trying to do something cool during play at the table. The time and effort of improvising something (or consulting the table quickly during prep) is absolutely minimal.

Second, and about as importantly to me, it doesn't account for scaling. If there's a hot brazier full of coals, I want that to have a narrative weight throughout most levels. I want those hot coals to be able to do something. If there's a table that restricts it to something like 2d6 damage, it becomes progressively less interesting than stuff that's on the PCs' sheets. That's not acceptable to me.

And, as I mentioned, I don't think there's anything "realistic" about hit points to begin with. Fire burns stuff. It burns stuff if you're 1st level or 15th level, and being higher level doesn't make you burn less. So why a "super hot fire (3d10)" does plot-relevant damage and a "bonfire (2d6)" doesn't is kind of silly and arbitrary to me. Falling into a bonfire should be pretty much bad all the time.

So basically - my goals are threefold: (1) speed of resolution, (2) minimization of prep, and (3) decent scaling, within reason. A book full of lists of stuff doesn't accomplish any of that for me.

-O

[obryn]

So! New article by Mearls.

First off, I have to note - this is the first post by the dev team I've read where I nodded my head through most of it instead of shaking it sadly or outright face-palming. I had to read it a second time, I was so stunned.

Anyway, my major takeaways:

(1) Alignment as easily extricable from the rules set. Hooray! As presented, though - as long as the magical effects only apply to supernatural creatures - I'd be good with it. That's where alignment belongs, IMO, if anywhere. I want an "Unaligned" option for mortals, though.

(2) Paladins of different alignments! We're at least keeping that from 4e. And making other alignment restrictions optional rules!

(3) Making damage spells interesting and awesome again! Another good one. In 3e they were so bad, they more or less removed them as part of the Wizard's role in 4e (except for the AoE bits). It would be good to see them as good choices again.

(4) I hope they can find a workable solution for save-or-lose effects. Really, there's not a wide gap between "death" and "paralyzed" in a rules and action economy sense. I don't know how this can balance out.

Overall, this was a good article for me. For once.

-O

[Seerow]

I just want to zero in on this before talking about the new Mearls article.

More or less, I completely disagree about which is more time and effort. I don't want a book full of tables of stuff. To me, that's a whole lot of time spent either looking things up or trying to figure out a closest match, when really what it comes down to is someone trying to do something cool during play at the table. The time and effort of improvising something (or consulting the table quickly during prep) is absolutely minimal.

Second, and about as importantly to me, it doesn't account for scaling. If there's a hot brazier full of coals, I want that to have a narrative weight throughout most levels. I want those hot coals to be able to do something. If there's a table that restricts it to something like 2d6 damage, it becomes progressively less interesting than stuff that's on the PCs' sheets. That's not acceptable to me.

It sounds to me like you really don't understand the concept of scaling then. a brazier of coals shouldn't have any narrative weight at a level where characters are literal demigods. If you want the environment to have more weight in a high level game, you need the players to be in an environment with things to interact with that are more on par for their level. A campfire or a handful of coals past 6th level or so -shouldn't- matter, at all. The characters and the enemies they face have outgrown that. You try to push a rock elemental's head into a brazier, he's going to wonder what you actually expected that to do.

Now there should be plenty of different environmental effects that are relevant for any given level range, and DMs should be encouraged to introduce these environment elements and allow players to take advantage of them. But past a certain point natural (or at least common natural) environmental effects can not and should not remain a valid method of attack.

And, as I mentioned, I don't think there's anything "realistic" about hit points to begin with. Fire burns stuff. It burns stuff if you're 1st level or 15th level, and being higher level doesn't make you burn less. So why a "super hot fire (3d10)" does plot-relevant damage and a "bonfire (2d6)" doesn't is kind of silly and arbitrary to me. Falling into a bonfire should be pretty much bad all the time.

And now explain why the Dragon, or Elemental, or Golem, or any other high level challenge, is meaningfully hurt by a bonfire. Explain why a bonfire's damage scales with the level of who goes into it, but a Wizard's fireball increases based on the Wizard's skill, not the level of the monster it hits.

[Kurald Galain]

It sounds to me like you really don't understand the concept of scaling then. a brazier of coals shouldn't have any narrative weight at a level where characters are literal demigods.

That's a very good point. I don't want a high-level rogue to have a decent chance at climbing level-appropriate walls (whatever that means). If the high-level rogue wants to climb something, he just does, automatically. The same goes for fire: a high-level barbarian should be able to just ignore it.

And no, you don't need long tables for any of that. You can make a very short list in the skill description (e.g. tree DC 10, rough stone wall DC 15, smooth stone wall DC 20, ice wall DC 25) and that's it, and from that point on you know that once your rogue can get +24 on climb checks, he can go straight up an ice wall.

It allows you to make a character that is awesome in some particular way, and have this actually reflected in the rules. I've never been in favor of characters that claim to be good at something on their sheet, but when a check is required in-game, they're only marginally better than anyone else.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Hey look, a new Mearls article! I actually don't have that much to complain about this time around.

The paladin is the one class that is going to deal with alignment, and even in that case we'll build it to focus on what the alignment represents, rather than treating chaotic, good, lawful, or evil as triggers for mechanics. A chaotic good paladin might have suggested abilities that focus on liberation, punishing would-be tyrants, and so forth, but those dwell on the concepts forged from the union of chaos and good: freedom, personal liberty, and so forth.

One important question: Can Paladins fall? I'm gonna be cynical and assume they can until otherwise noted, but that's really the main problem here.

Getting the damage spells back to a position of prominence in the game is a key goal for spellcasting in D&D Next.

Meh. I used to be a big fan of evocation but now I honestly find it kinda lame, and not just for purely numerical reasons. "I blast lightning until bad thing fall down" sounds really cool and powerful but it gets old pretty fast. Using magic should be an opportunity to get really creative and come up with clever solutions, and direct offense is just about the least creative and clever application of it imaginable.

There's a reason my favorite D&D spells are the limited-but-open-ended ones like Unseen Servant, Silent Image, or even Prestidigitation.

(Also, I wonder how they plan to make blasting relevant again when their philosophy with this edition is supposedly "Armor class doesn't scale, throw tons of hit points at everything instead." Casters need a damage scaling mechanic, which they currently don't have aside from just using bigger spells. Also, I notice Mearls only seems to be referring to the Wizard's casting in the ensuing paragraphs. Where does the Cleric fit into this? Note that I'm of the opinion that Clerics should be merged into the Wizard or maybe the Paladin.)

Imagine the wizard, spending actions on multiple rounds to slowly turn a dragon to stone, while the fighter, cleric, and rogue hack away at the creature and try to slow it down long enough for the spell to take hold. If the dragon can get to the wizard, an attack might break the spell before it can take its full effect. The dragon is injured from its partial transformation, but powerful foes don't fall in a single round with one missed save.

How? Do you have to use multiple castings to make it stick like 4E? How does that fit in with their assumption of far fewer spell slots? What's the Wizard doing on their turn except "I keep casting Flesh to Stone?"

(Notice it's the Fighter, Rogue, and Cleric who are doing the interesting part of protecting the wizard from the dragon. Sounds awfully boring to be the wizard in this situation.)

As an aside, it's worth noting that monster special abilities don't have to obey that rule. The medusa can still turn you to stone on a single failed save.

I polymorph into a Medusa. What now, mother****er?

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Responses to neonchameleon and obryn, spoilered since we're on L&L now.

Spoiler

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@neonchameleon: Given your background of GMing a few sessions of Paranoia and a few of 4e, versus mine of DMing lots of systems for many years, it looks like we've been talking at cross-purposes. Most of the benefits you're deriving from the skill challenge framework are due to seeing this stuff for the first time rather than any inherent quality to the system itself, while I'm arguing from the standpoint of someone who's run 1e, 2e, 3e, and 4e and finds the same ol' same ol' to be a massive letdown.

I'm willing to concede that the basic guidelines in the 4e DMGs are helpful for new DMs; it occurs to me that lots of people raved about the DMG1 being the best DMG yet when it first came out, while I didn't get anything out of it. I hope you can see, though, that for DMs who like their games a bit crunchier it's helpful to have the added detail that Kurald mentioned so that scaling can arise organically (i.e. scaling "just happens" based on the math instead of having the DM fiddle with the numbers to try to get that), and that as long as the advice from the 4e DMG is still in the 5e DMG (though not enshrined as the only mechanics) you can still derive benefit from it and we can both be happy.

@obryn: I agree with what Seerow said about how scaling really works, and also want to add something: the benefit of having codified rules in the book is that you, the DM, don't have to do all of the work. If a player wants to do something cool, he can look something up between turns and be ready to go with all of his rolls when his initiative count comes around. Speaking again as an experienced DM with an experienced group, even the crazy stuff takes a lot less time than it used to because people have to look up less stuff and can figure out on their own how to resolve complex plans, and I don't need to sit there and okay or veto much once I've set up the scene.

Things will start out taking time and being complicated for both the "make stuff up" groups and the "look stuff up" groups, but in the latter case the more you play the faster everything gets, while in the former case the DM is still the bottleneck even when you know the system well. And as I said before, if the rules are codified but the books have good improvisation advice, there's nothing stopping you as the DM from ignoring what you see as fiddly rules and running it fast and loose, whereas if the rules aren't codified there's no way to recover that detail and fast resolution speed without writing all your improvised stuff down...in which case you have a houserules document that might as well have been in the rules to begin with.

So, Legends and Lore. (Which is here for those to lazy to go find it.) Reactions:

1) By default, detect evil detects undead and evil outsiders and similar for other alignment-based spells. So, it's the compromise solution that everyone and their brother has been talking about for years. It's not innovative, but it's a solution I actually like and think will work well.

Alignment paladins are of the honor/freedom/tyranny/slaughter variety with similar structures but alignment themed abilities rather than just total palette swaps. Again, nothing new and different, but a good solution.

2) Having multiple ongoing spells up at once is going to be balanced by essentially setting their durations to Concentration, and SoD/SoS spells are going to be mostly single-target...but some monsters still have normal SoDs and it's up to DM discretion to choose them carefully. Two points here: first, so much for a unified solution to SoD. That'll make it harder for the monsters-as-PCs rules that will inevitably come down the pipe.

EDIT: Also harder for polymorph, as Craft mentioned while I was posting. Show of hands: How many people think WotC will get shapechanging right this time around? Yeah, me neither.

Second, they said they want to return blasting to prominence, but they didn't mention anything about boosting those spells' damage, adding side effects, ensuring HP stay low (which was the real problem with 3e blasting), or anything like that, just reining in SoDs. Once again, if this article is something to go by, they're nerfing the interesting spells like flesh to stone down to the level of the mechanically-boring fireball instead of the reverse or meeting in the middle. SoDs obviously need a nerf from their 3e height, but I want to see blasting spells get a power and interest buff, too: I'd like to see bouncing lightning bolts, compressible fireballs, and such again (though obviously with clearer and easier mechanics this time around).

The Concentration spells introduce the "wizard does the same thing for several rounds" problem, though this time it's because all of the cool spells take X rounds to have full effect instead of having a casting time of X rounds--better than long casting times, but it seems like they're trying to get you to use blasting spells against groups and SoDs against bosses, which seems like a limiting design strategy. It's entirely possible that this will change, and I'm optimistic for once, but only time will tell.

[obryn]

It sounds to me like you really don't understand the concept of scaling then. a brazier of coals shouldn't have any narrative weight at a level where characters are literal demigods. If you want the environment to have more weight in a high level game, you need the players to be in an environment with things to interact with that are more on par for their level. A campfire or a handful of coals past 6th level or so -shouldn't- matter, at all. The characters and the enemies they face have outgrown that. You try to push a rock elemental's head into a brazier, he's going to wonder what you actually expected that to do.

Now there should be plenty of different environmental effects that are relevant for any given level range, and DMs should be encouraged to introduce these environment elements and allow players to take advantage of them. But past a certain point natural (or at least common natural) environmental effects can not and should not remain a valid method of attack.

That's basically how the 4e scaling is supposed to work, and also part of what I do. I think it's a good idea for what it's worth. But that's not all that I do, because that's not always where the story brings us. The battlefield shouldn't be boring just because we're in the open desert instead of (say) the lava-realm of Kragmorta below Giustenal.

And now explain why the Dragon, or Elemental, or Golem, or any other high level challenge, is meaningfully hurt by a bonfire. Explain why a bonfire's damage scales with the level of who goes into it, but a Wizard's fireball increases based on the Wizard's skill, not the level of the monster it hits.

Really - if we're still going on about "lol bonfire getting hotter" then I'm not particularly inclined to repeat myself a fourth or fifth time about it.

Anyway, kicking a golem into a brazier and knocking it down is going to be fun anyway, and if one of my players wanted to do it, I don't see what any of us would gain out of stomping on the idea.

-O

[obryn]

I agree with what Seerow said about how scaling really works, and also want to add something: the benefit of having codified rules in the book is that you, the DM, don't have to do all of the work. If a player wants to do something cool, he can look something up between turns and be ready to go with all of his rolls when his initiative count comes around. Speaking again as an experienced DM with an experienced group, even the crazy stuff takes a lot less time than it used to because people have to look up less stuff and can figure out on their own how to resolve complex plans, and I don't need to sit there and okay or veto much once I've set up the scene.

I am an experienced DM with an experienced group, too, here. And I can say that IME this is not how it works out in play at all. With a set scaling system, a player can be reasonably sure that their fun and interesting idea will do something - and I rely on them to let me know their goals. They can say what they want to have happen, and I set the DCs. Again, this is more a collaborative effort than you usually find in D&D, but it works very fast and very well. There's no bottleneck to speak of; it flows smoothly.

Things will start out taking time and being complicated for both the "make stuff up" groups and the "look stuff up" groups, but in the latter case the more you play the faster everything gets, while in the former case the DM is still the bottleneck even when you know the system well. And as I said before, if the rules are codified but the books have good improvisation advice, there's nothing stopping you as the DM from ignoring what you see as fiddly rules and running it fast and loose, whereas if the rules aren't codified there's no way to recover that detail and fast resolution speed without writing all your improvised stuff down...in which case you have a houserules document that might as well have been in the rules to begin with.

You're assuming I see value in writing the improvised stuff down. I don't. Because looking it up later defeats the purpose.

And my experiences of bottlenecks are, simply put, wildly different.

-O

[Ashdate]

It sounds to me like you really don't understand the concept of scaling then. a brazier of coals shouldn't have any narrative weight at a level where characters are literal demigods. If you want the environment to have more weight in a high level game, you need the players to be in an environment with things to interact with that are more on par for their level. A campfire or a handful of coals past 6th level or so -shouldn't- matter, at all. The characters and the enemies they face have outgrown that. You try to push a rock elemental's head into a brazier, he's going to wonder what you actually expected that to do.

As has been pointed out before, no two obstacles (be they fire, braziers, snowstorms, or otherwise) need be the same. In think you (and others) are also vastly overestimating the benefit of "not" scaling things. I mean, in the case of 4e we're literally talking about a single table that can handle a huge variety of proposed actions; it's quite efficient in that manner, and much more practical than digging through rulebooks or expecting players to memorize DCs and damage values to dozens and dozens of potential actions/hazards.

There is little "bottlenecking", because the player needs to ask/tell the DM what they want to do anyway, just like any edition of D&D. A table like Page 42's simply ensures that if the DM didn't have an answer prepared ahead of time, he has an easy fall back; no need to dig in any book for an answer.

I think you're right that there should be some narrative weight to the obstacle in question, but I think that is better judged by the DM, rather than through a giant list of "hazards, DCs, and damage" that neither the players nor the DM is likely to remember. A table that says "pushing someone into a brazier does 2d6 points of damage" is no more useful in that regard than a table like page 42 in the above situation, except perhaps to start an argument when a player does push a rock golem into a brazier and is told that "the rock golem is unaffected because you're level 6, and it's a rock golem."

This is not about "mother-may-I" DM'ing (as was claimed earlier). It comes down to saying "yes", and having some reasonable guide to reward the player for their improvised actions. "Mother-may-I" DMing would be the player asking permission to push our rock golem into a brazier; table 42 is simply saying "sure, here's what happens".

You're right that, ideally, the players wouldn't be finding brass braziers at higher levels, but instead magical diamond braziers and onyx braziers with trapped fire elementals inside. But especially if we're talking about improvised actions here, then we've got to assume that the DM probably didn't expect the PC to take the action in question. In those situations, why not have a guide to reward the action?

I mean look, if you guys want to have a small table to common hazards (fire, falling, drowning, etc.) and their effects, be my guest. I'll gladly use it when I think it's appropriate, and not use it when "I think in this situation dealing 2d6 damage for being on fire is inappropriate, because you just pushed that guy into a fire elemental and that should be bad." But if we can agree that it's impossible to create a useful table with every hazard on it, then a small one (like Page 42) won't hurt anyone.

That's a very good point. I don't want a high-level rogue to have a decent chance at climbing level-appropriate walls (whatever that means). If the high-level rogue wants to climb something, he just does, automatically. The same goes for fire: a high-level barbarian should be able to just ignore it.

I think it's important to say that it doesn't need to be one or the other. 4e's Page 42 DCs are set such that if you're really good at something (i.e. training, high stat), you'll be really good at it throughout your career, despite the scaling. A +10 bonus to a skill (training + stat + background bonus) will ensure that you succeed pretty much 100% of the time for any easy or moderate DC value, and have only about a 25% chance of failure for a "hard" DC value, despite whatever level you are. If you lack training or a relevant stat, your chance of success on a hard task is ~25%. Does that seem right for you?

(I'm open to adjusting the numbers)

And it should be noted that there are static DCs for certain tasks (such as climbing) in 4e. And that's fine! Static DCs can be great for teaching the PCs how "difficult" a task is. But at the end of the day, no table can encompass every decision a PC makes, so having some quick and easy fallback seems to me to be a good thing.

(Certainly, I think 5e's skill system needs some work, but I'm pretty okay with the concept that particular numbers can be used as a guide for difficulty, although the range of bonuses/current DCs leaves much to be desired.)

Finally, on the concept of fires and barbarians, I think an improvised damage table can work just fine in these situations. Fire can be a threat at all levels, depending on what kind of fire we're talking about. Maybe a campfire is bad to fall into if you're level 2, but I don't expect the DM to be trying to push level 10 PCs into campfires, I expect them to be trying to push them into magic furnaces that have a portal to the City of Brass in them. How would you represent that on a table?

[navar100]

I definitely do not like the idea of monsters being able to save or die PCs while PCs have to cast, do nothing next round, do nothing following round, do nothing after that round, hope monster dies round after.

[noparlpf]

I definitely do not like the idea of monsters being able to save or die PCs while PCs have to cast, do nothing next round, do nothing following round, do nothing after that round, hope monster dies round after.

Maybe for some very few really big bad monsters? Their claim is "it's iconic for gorgons" but that's kind of a BS argument for game imbalance.

[1337 b4k4]

I definitely do not like the idea of monsters being able to save or die PCs while PCs have to cast, do nothing next round, do nothing following round, do nothing after that round, hope monster dies round after.

Neither do I, but I don't like the 4e way of handling it any better. Casting sleep and having all the monsters save by the second turn sucks a lot. 4e was all about the round to round combat and it showed in the lack of any player to be able to impart a serious ongoing effect with reliability.

I think I would rather see SoD spells and effects have a drawback rather than simply be drug out. Perhaps instead SoDs drain 1 HP per level / per target. Or they take up 2 spell slots. SoD effects aren't bad, they just have to be managed differently.

[Draz74]

The Concentration spells introduce the "wizard does the same thing for several rounds" problem, though this time it's because all of the cool spells take X rounds to have full effect instead of having a casting time of X rounds--better than long casting times,

That's ... not what the article is talking about when it mentions the Concentration mechanic. It's talking about the stuff in the new playtests where some important encounter-duration-type spells (like Stinking Cloud) have a "Concentration" keyword on them, which means you can only have one such spell active at any given time.

[Excession]

That's ... not what the article is talking about when it mentions the Concentration mechanic. It's talking about the stuff in the new playtests where some important encounter-duration-type spells (like Stinking Cloud) have a "Concentration" keyword on them, which means you can only have one such spell active at any given time.

The relevant passage is this one:

Imagine the wizard, spending actions on multiple rounds to slowly turn a dragon to stone, ...

This is explicitly spending actions (and 5e has only one type of action) over multiple rounds to get an effect. Well, unless he's talking about that other kind of action that isn't an Action.

In 4e terms this would be a "sustain standard", or maybe even standard+move spell that kills the target after three rounds or something. I'm not sure about such spells. Giving casters their own personal pool of resources to attack while everyone else attacks hit points seems like it could be problematic. I think I would prefer if flesh to stone just did hp damage and a slowing/weakening effect or something.

[1337 b4k4]

I think I would prefer if flesh to stone just did hp damage and a slowing/weakening effect or something.

I think this would be even worse to be honest. Part of the fun of those sorts of spells is that they offer you an alternative for getting past an obstacle beyond "beat it into submission." Kill Strahd by beating him up? Ho hum, everyone has done that. Kill Strahd because he missed his saving throw and you had a scroll of dispel evil? Everyone will be talking about it for weeks. Let's not reduce every way of overcoming an obstacle to either draining its HP or running a skill challenge.

[TuggyNE]

I think I would prefer if flesh to stone just did hp damage and a slowing/weakening effect or something.

I agree with the desire to change save-or-dies into attacks against a pool of points that others can attack as well, but making it HP damage feels unavoidably bizarre and wrong at a basic level. The point of, say, a basilisk or gorgon or medusa is that it doesn't care how sturdy a warrior you may be, but just zaps you into stone. Similarly a mage (evil or otherwise) who casts flesh to stone isn't wounding you, they're petrifying you. (And, as 1337 b4k4 said, it's boring if every means of defeating a monster reduces to "slog through its HP".)

My own preference then is to introduce one or more other pools that mean different things than "toughness", and give essentially all characters at least some means of attacking any given pool (though efficiency may vary).

Edit: of course, this won't happen in 5e. But I'd still prefer not shifting toward sameness.

[ThiagoMartell]

Frankly, monsters-as-PCs rules should either die in a fire or be like AD&D, where you could only play a few creatures and they were not carbon-copies of their monster counterparts.

[Ashdate]

Neither do I, but I don't like the 4e way of handling it any better. Casting sleep and having all the monsters save by the second turn sucks a lot. 4e was all about the round to round combat and it showed in the lack of any player to be able to impart a serious ongoing effect with reliability.

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, despite requiring two saving throws (each with a 55% chance of success for regular monsters, barring feat support), the Wizard "Sleep" spell was still considered very powerful (certainly the best power of its level in core). You might disagree with how it "feels", but all evidence suggests that 4e's implementation was anything but "sucky" from a mechanical perspective.

If SoL/SoD's are to be brought into 5e, they should either take some lessons from 4e, or be hard to pull off. How that is implemented is still up in the air, but I think it could be interesting to limit the amount of "ongoing" spells as a whole. I like the idea of something like stone to flesh being a multi-round thing that takes an initial standard action, then requires some amount of concentration each round (perhaps the "same" action one would use to keep allies buffed).

[Menteith]

Frankly, monsters-as-PCs rules should either die in a fire or be like AD&D, where you could only play a few creatures and they were not carbon-copies of their monster counterparts.

...but I really like playing as monsters .

Why do you dislike the notion?

[ThiagoMartell]

...but I really like playing as monsters .

Why do you dislike the notion?

Because it's too hard to make it work without messing up other important things.

[obryn]

...but I really like playing as monsters .

Why do you dislike the notion?

Not addressed to me, but I also don't like monsters as PCs. My own main issue is that I don't want monsters to be built like PCs in the first place.

That kind of precludes the rest.

-O

[Menteith]

Because it's too hard to make it work without messing up other important things.

Do you believe that the LA/RHD system was sufficient? If you don't, do you believe the reason that it was not sufficient to be because of a systematic problem or due to poorly assigned LA/RHD amounts?

EDIT

Not addressed to me, but I also don't like monsters as PCs. My own main issue is that I don't want monsters to be built like PCs in the first place.

That kind of precludes the rest.

-O

Even in 3.5, you don't need to build a monster as a PC if you don't want to. I've created creatures with whatever abilities I thought they'd need, gave them a reasonable amount of HP/Attack Bonus, and set them loose on the party. I like fully statting up "boss" creatures or a generic creature that will reappear frequently (for example, I had a "Hobgoblin Captain" build I used for multiple encounters in the Red Hand of Doom campaign).

Still, I don't think that monsters need to be as detailed as PCs - my objection is more to the notion that PCs shouldn't be monsters. TM's objection is legitimate; if only a small handful of their intended audience wants to play as a monster, then they shouldn't waste design space on it (at least initially - it could be a module or something).

[PairO'Dice Lost]

That's ... not what the article is talking about when it mentions the Concentration mechanic. It's talking about the stuff in the new playtests where some important encounter-duration-type spells (like Stinking Cloud) have a "Concentration" keyword on them, which means you can only have one such spell active at any given time.

Excession has the right of it. "Cast a spell that deals [1/X]th of its effect each round for X rounds" is much better than "Cast a spell that takes X rounds to cast and then takes full effect" in that it gives you more choices (abort early if something dies, spend only as many actions as you need before switching targets, etc.), but they both have the fundamental problem that the wizard is sitting there doing the same thing round after round without the redeeming features that melee types have like positioning, tactics, and such.

If they're going to have multi-round spells, I'd rather see them take one of two forms. The first would be like the channeled X line of 3e spells--channeled pyroburst, channeled lifetheft, and a few more--where you can cast it as a standard or full round action for a "normal" spell effect, a swift action for a reduced effect, or two rounds for a bigger effect. Two rounds is really the longest you should have to sit there doing the same thing over and over again (actively in combat, I mean; if you're casting a ritual and can handwave the time, that's fine), and if an effect is too strong to be split into only two rounds, then it's probably too strong to be cast at that level.

That would be a nice way to handle healing that would leave most everyone happy, actually, now that I think about it. Some people want to attack and cast in the same round, some want it to take up your action, and some people want to play healers who do nothing but heal. Ta-da, channeled cure wounds! Cast as a [whatever 5e is using to denote free-but-only-once-per-turn actions], heal a bit of damage; cast as your action, heal a bunch of damage; cast for two turns, heal more damage and get a secondary effect.

The second form would be spells that you can maintain automatically (though, again, only one at a time) that you can "take control of" with your actions. Something like a flaming sphere that would automatically attack the nearest creature but that you could take an action to redirect, or a flesh to stone that slowly inflicts penalties but that you can spend an action to concentrate on to try to immobilize the target for a round, things like that. That way you can't have a ton of spells running at once, but you're not forced to stick with just the one spell for multiple rounds.

I think this would be even worse to be honest. Part of the fun of those sorts of spells is that they offer you an alternative for getting past an obstacle beyond "beat it into submission." Kill Strahd by beating him up? Ho hum, everyone has done that. Kill Strahd because he missed his saving throw and you had a scroll of dispel evil? Everyone will be talking about it for weeks. Let's not reduce every way of overcoming an obstacle to either dining its HP or running a skill challenge.

Agreed. My favorite wizards to play are the ones whose spell selections don't have a single spell that deals damage or adds to stats. I'd prefer that a 5e beguiler- or illusionist-style caster show up long before a sorcerer- or warlock-style caster, but sadly that ship has sailed.

[navar100]

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, despite requiring two saving throws (each with a 55% chance of success for regular monsters, barring feat support), the Wizard "Sleep" spell was still considered very powerful (certainly the best power of its level in core). You might disagree with how it "feels", but all evidence suggests that 4e's implementation was anything but "sucky" from a mechanical perspective.

If SoL/SoD's are to be brought into 5e, they should either take some lessons from 4e, or be hard to pull off. How that is implemented is still up in the air, but I think it could be interesting to limit the amount of "ongoing" spells as a whole. I like the idea of something like stone to flesh being a multi-round thing that takes an initial standard action, then requires some amount of concentration each round (perhaps the "same" action one would use to keep allies buffed).

If save or die takes a couple of rounds but the wizard can still do something like cast other non-save or die spells, I'm fine with that. Say move or swift action to concentrate on save or die spell but standard action can cast other spells that don't require concentration, even attack spells. What I don't like is PCs not being allowed to instakill monsters but monsters can instakill PCs to their heart's content.

That and I really don't want the wizard spending several rounds doing nothing waiting for a spell to go off while everyone else gets to have fun.

[Ashdate]

If save or die takes a couple of rounds but the wizard can still do something like cast other non-save or die spells, I'm fine with that. Say move or swift action to concentrate on save or die spell but standard action can cast other spells that don't require concentration, even attack spells. What I don't like is PCs not being allowed to instakill monsters but monsters can instakill PCs to their heart's content.

That and I really don't want the wizard spending several rounds doing nothing waiting for a spell to go off while everyone else gets to have fun.

I agree; if we're to have "SoD/SoL"'s in some form, it shouldn't either be a PC exclusive thing (although I'm tentatively okay with Monster versions being more powerful; I think it could be pretty fun to have monsters whose whole shtick is "kill/disrupt this one guy in three rounds or you're in trouble"), nor should their abilities require several rounds of their immediate attention to use.

But clearly, the old model where SoL/SoD spells had a "yes/no" (and fairly difficult to protect against) check to work or not created problems, if not from the player's side, then from the DM's side (oh the encounters I ruined with my Wizard...).

Mearls is correct that monster HP inflation from 2e to 3e really harmed spells like the 3e Fireball (compared to its 2e counterpart), but we can hopefully agree that the solution isn't necessarily to buff Fireball (or nerf Monster HP); I think that the damage spells in 3.5e would be pretty good in a world without SoL/SoD's, even with monster HP as it is.

4e's "nerf" (with easier/extended saving throws) was, I think, a pretty good solution (not perfect, but pretty good), but if people don't like it, then there needs to be an alternative. If that alternative must be resolved in a single die roll, then I think you either need to weaken/cut SoL/SoD spells (such as by having to "channel" it for several rounds for it to take effect - perhaps not as your full action, but as your one "buff/whatever" spell), or you need to make the "save" against that roll pretty easy to make.